Closed Everything Looks Better Up Here

[Indira Khatri]

Indi had settled in to Slytherin quite well. Her roommates were...tolerable, for now. There were a couple who were definitely going to turn into problems but there were also some that didn't seem to be totally awful. She had even started to get the hang of navigating around the castle and managed to write to her family. Hopefully they would be satisfied by the letter and wouldn't too pesky when it came to correspondence since she knew she would quickly become busy with school work. The only complaint she had when it came to her house was tragically where it had the unfortunate luck to be located. The dungeons were dark, even in the middle of the day and she hated it.

So today Indi had made her way all the way up to the towers. She had to admit that the view from up here was amazing and it was probably the only thing that made her wish she had been sorted into Ravenclaw instead. It was a curious thought but in the end she didn't think it truly mattered what house you were in as long as you were willing to put in the work. With a sigh she pulled out her History of Magic book and started to read and take a few notes. It was still to early in the semester to have much homework but she thought it would be wise to get ahead before the assignments caught up with her.

 

[Weston Stirling]

Weston was determined to explore the entire castle and find all of its secrets. After finding the Conglomerated Arts Room with its magical instruments, he couldn't wait to see what other surprises the castle had in store for him. Today he wanted to see the other towers. He wasn't completely sure how he'd get up the Divination tower as a first year, and he'd already seen the Astronomy one during his classes. So that left the North Tower.

It took a long, long time to descend all the way down from the Ravenclaw common room and then climb back up the North Tower. By the time Weston reached the top, he was panting slightly. He paused, hunched over a bit, and surveyed his surroundings. To his delight, there was another girl his age, and he greeted her brightly. "Hi!" He caught a glimpse of the view and immediately made his way over to the window. "Wow," he said softly. Turning to the other girl, he frantically waved her over. "Check this out! You can see everything." He might live in Ravenclaw, but he didn't think he'd ever get tired of a good view.

 

[Indira Khatri]

Indi heard someone coming up the stairs to the tower long before she saw them. She was a bit relieved to find it was a boy her age, and not an older student who might be annoyed with her presence. “Hi.” she replied, as he excitedly turned away from her to look at the view. She studied him warily and she started to wonder if he was always that energetic or if he was really that impressed by the view. “I’m not blind. I can see it.” she said dryly. Indi knew he was probably just being nice but it still annoyed her, as if she hadn't been up here before him and perfectly capable of looking out a window. But she sighed and closed her book anyways, trying her best to play nice with her classmate. She took her time joining him though, and crossed her arms as she walked over beside him. "Have you never been in a tall building before?" she asked and looked at the boy skeptically.

 

[Weston Stirling]

Weston gave the girl an amused smile. "But you were looking in the wrong direction," he said playfully, pointing at her book. "C'mon. This is way better than — Is that a textbook?" He tried to see what she was reading. It looked a lot like the History of Magic textbook they had been on his school supplies list. "Why are you reading that?" he asked curiously. Classes had barely begun. Surely she couldn't have homework already.

Weston took a couple of steps to the side to give the girl more room to look out the window. "Yes, I mean no? I mean yes, I've been in a tall building before. I live in one back home." The view from his apartment could admittedly be better. It looked out over a dingy carpark. But he liked being so high up and seeing the city streets spread out beneath him. "But I haven't seen the view from this tower yet," he said, still peering off into the distance. Weston was pretty sure he still preferred city views, but this wasn't bad at all.

 

[Indira Khatri]

Indi wanted to argue she had looked before he got there but she decided not to waste her breath on trying to point out something so useless. “It is.” she said defensively, and glanced back at her book sitting with the rest of her things. “I just want to be prepared for the first class. We don’t know what's going to be covered.” she said coolly. It wasn't her fault if he fell behind just because he hadn't had the foresight to open his books before the first day of classes.

“It’s a simple question.” she muttered to herself as he stammered out his answer. “How tall?” she asked curiously about whatever building he supposedly lived in. Indi wondered what he considered tall if he was having that much trouble answering a question. “It is nice.” she admitted, looking out the window again. She leaned on the sill of the window, trying to look straight down but her breath fogged up the glass. “It does beat the view from the dungeon.” she said with a smirk. “Because it doesn’t have one.” she added after a beat, making sure he got the joke she was trying to make.

 

[Weston Stirling]

Weston's smile dropped. Now he was kind of worried. "Do you think they're really going to expect us to know stuff for the first day?" He hadn't seriously paid attention to most of his lessons at home, and that could now pose a bit of a problem in his quest to be the best Ravenclaw ever. But he wasn't sure he was worried enough to actually start reading his textbooks now. He'd already flipped through a couple and noted the disappointing lack of pictures.

He hardly noticed the girl's muttering as he tried to figure out how to deal with the "never" in her question. Yes, I've never been in a tall building definitely wasn't right, so was it No, I've never never been in a tall building? Words could be confusing. Thankfully her next question was easier. "Twenty stories. But we were on the tenth floor." He'd once suggested that his parents buy an apartment on the top floor, but they'd only smiled and told him it wasn't that easy.

Weston laughed at the girl's joke, deciding he liked her already. She was funny. "Are you in Slytherin then?" he asked, turning to look at her. "Is it creepy being in the dungeons? Is it true you can see into the lake?" Though he definitely wanted to see the entire castle, the thought of exploring the dungeons made him nervous. What if there were skeletons or trapdoors or spiders lying around?

 

[Indira Khatri]

The other boys slightly worried expression made Indi feel justified in her early studying. "Probably not, but you never know and it doesn't hurt to be prepared." she said with a dismissive shrug. "Besides they've done like studies and stuff about how being familiar with the subject matter is actually really helpful." she explained, still feeling defensive.

"I guess that is pretty tall." she admitted, it wasn't impressive but still enough to provide some kind of view. Although she was sure the view from the tenth floor apartment had nothing on the view from a castle's tower. Indi felt another surge of satisfaction when the boy laughed at her joke, and she smiled. "I am." she said proudly. Honestly when she was sorted she had been a little surprised she hadn't ended up in Ravenclaw, the house known for knowledge seekers. But she figured cunning, a Slytherin trait, was a kind of smarts so it worked too. "It's not so bad." she said in a disinterested voice, not wanting to sound like a coward. In reality she didn't like it much, it was always too dark and she felt like something was going to pop out at her at any second. "Yeah, but I haven't seen anything interesting yet. It just looks kind of gross and murky most of the time." she explained with a frown.

 

[Weston Stirling]

Weston decided to latch onto the "probably not" and take his chances. Maybe he'd have to reevaluate after the first day, but for now, he had much better things to do than read a boring textbook. Though he wanted to be a good student, he couldn't actually bring himself to do the work necessary.

He was surprised to hear the girl's indifference toward the dungeons. She must be incredibly brave. "Really? So there aren't skeletons and ghosts and rusty chains everywhere?" Every time he tried to enter the castle's lower levels, he thought of the dungeons from muggle movies, the ones where evil kings trapped prisoners who slowly rotted away in darkness. Now that he thought about it, why did the school even have a dungeon? What was Hogwarts keeping down there?

"Oh," Weston said, disappointed. What was even the point of a window into the lake if you couldn't see anything? "I heard there's all kinds of awesome stuff in there, like giant man-eating eels and mermaids. It'd be cool to see them without having to go into the lake." Dangerous creatures were fun to think about, but only from a distance. He'd seen a couple of students splashing around in the lake, but he knew he could never enter its waters.

 

[Indira Khatri]

Indi laughed at his next question. Was he serious? “No.” she said bluntly and gave him a withering look. “There aren’t skeletons or chains, it’s just a common room.” she said with an exasperated sigh. “And there are ghosts all around the school. It’s not like seeing one down in the dungeons would actually mean anything.” she explained and quickly forgave him for his dumb questions earlier when he mentioned monsters in the lake. That would make living at a school for wizards more interesting for sure. “Oh really?” she asked, curious. “Must be a pretty big eel if I can eat a whole man.” she thought out loud. “Sorry to disappoint but I haven’t seen any yet. It’s probably just a matter of time though. Besides the creatures probably avoids that window anyways, they can like sense the people on the other side and stay far away.” she said, it wasn’t like she spent all her time in the common room just waiting to see something.

 

[Weston Stirling]

Weston was quite enjoying all the creepy mental images of the dungeons he was conjuring. There were probably also blood-stained blades and broken bits of armor and — or not. The girl quickly shut down his series of mental pictures, which was both kind of reassuring and disappointing. "But ghosts in the dark are creepier," he pointed out. It was hard to be intimidated by a ghost when there was sunlight everywhere and you could barely see it. "And don't they like haunting the places where they died?" He had a hard time believing anyone had ever died a peaceful death in a dungeon. The ghosts down there were probably meaner.

Weston nodded eagerly. "That's why I want to see it!" He supposed what she was saying about the creatures avoiding the window made sense. "Okay, but if you do see anything, you have to let me know." It wasn't quite the same as seeing it himself, but the confirmation that there really was a giant man-eating eel out there would be cool. "You could also take a picture of it!" Good thing magical pictures moved; that was nearly as good as a video which was of course nearly as good as seeing it in person.

 

[Indira Khatri]

Indi sighed at his insistence. “I guess.” she said dryly. The dungeons weren't that dark and scary, but she wondered momentarily if she should correct him or simply let him picture them as horrifying dens of torture. It would definitely make her seem much braver then she actually was, which she didn't mind that. “I don’t know, I haven’t tried to talk to any yet. But I don’t think they all died here.” she said. She wasn't positive of that theory but she was fairly certain that the amount of people who died at the school didn't add up with how many ghosts she had seen about. Indi laughed at his excitement, “I’m sure if you staked out long enough by the lake you might see something, even if it is a mermaid telling you to leave them alone.” she pointed out playfully. "It’s a deal.” she said in regards to the photo, before rolling her eyes. "I'm Indi by the way. I don't think we've properly met yet." she said and offered her hand out to him.

 

[Weston Stirling]

Weston nodded, glad that she'd agreed. Though he supposed her point about not all the ghosts being from Hogwarts made sense. "That would be a lot of deaths for a school," he mused. "And some of them are really old." He wasn't quite as sure about her suggestion to stake out the lake. "That could take forever, and I don't know if mermaids come up the surface," he said, missing her joke. Weston wasn't the biggest fan of the outdoors, and staring at the surface of the lake seemed boring. Observing it from the Slytherin common room would probably be much more helpful. Thankfully, she agreed to his photo request.

Weston shook her hand enthusiastically, happy that he'd made a new friend. What else could a handshake mean? "Indie... like the type of music?" he asked, wondering if he'd heard correctly. It was an unusual name, but he liked it. "I'm Weston." Maybe his parents should have named him Western. He hadn't known it was possible to have a genre as a name.

 

[Indira Khatri]

Indi smiled to herself as he seemed to agree with her ghost theory. She couldn’t be sure without investigating some more but she was glad she had at least been able to make a compelling argument. “I suppose.” she said thoughtfully, when he mentioned mermaids coming to the surface. She hasn’t really considered the behavior or mermaids yet. But she figured they could probably handle being outside of water for at least a short time, the same way a fish didn’t die the second it was taken out of water.

Indi’s eyes widened at the enthusiasm in which he shook her hand. “Kind of.” she said tightly, it sounded the same even if it was spelt differently. “It’s short for Indira.” she explained as she tried to discreetly shake out her hand. “Nice to meet you.” she said politely, unsure about how she felt about him.